Because of your lazy slumber, you probably have never heard of this incident

I always thought that The San Diego Union-Tribune is merely a mindless mouthpiece of the rich and powerful in San Diego. A recent incident makes me feel even stronger that your newspaper is simply a lap dog of the rich and powerful San Diegans. Because of your lazy slumber, you probably have never heard of this incident: Last December San Diego Police Department gang unit Detective Jeff Blackford crashed his car while driving drunk. Several San Diego PD officers and sergeants, in their attempt to cover up the suspected DUI, administered a blood-alcohol test three hours after the arrest to give Blackford’s body an adequate time to break down the blood alcohol. (Comically Blackford still flunked the blood alcohol test even after three hours of delay!) According to an internal investigation of the incident, a sergeant and officer of the San Diego PD falsified their police report in a futile attempt to exonerate Detective Blackford. (In spite of all these efforts by San Diego PD officers, Detective Blackford was convicted of DUI.) Falsification of police report happens to be a felony in California. San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and her office were notified of the falsification of the police report but nobody has been charged of any crime as of now. What is Ms. Dumanis trying to do? Sweep the incident under the rug until the public forgets about it?

This kind of cops covering up for other cops is not unusual within the ranks of the San Diego Police Department according to the Reader magazine. The incident above is merely a tip of a huge iceberg. In spite of such a blatant corruption and Ms. Dumanis’s refusal to expose police corruption, your newspaper has barely mentioned this incident. This kind of filthy official corruption deserves a repeated attack by an established newspaper like The San Diego Union-Tribune. Your newspaper should be attacking our corrupt police department and district attorney’s office every day. Isn’t that what the Washington Post did when they exposed the Watergate scandal?

But what is going on with your newspaper? Are you not interested in exposing official corruption by the police and district attorney’s office? Are you not interested in attacking the criminal elements in the police department and district attorney’s office? If you did not know, there is a long tradition of muckraking journalism in this country. Bernstein and Woodward exposed the crime of Nixon administration, Upton Sinclair exposed countless official corruptions in the early 20th century, A famous muckraking radio journalist Rev, R.P. Shuler of Los Angeles persistently exposed and criticized the corruption of the Los Angeles Police Department. (Remember Shuler’s colleague and personal friend Rev. Briegleb in the 2008 movie “Changeling?”) There are countless other muckraking journalists who exposed numerous official corruptions in our great nation. Maybe your newspaper doesn’t want to be a respectable muckraker but wants to be a cute, little lapdog of the rich and powerful.

I am amazed that smaller, offbeat San Diego-based magazines like the CityBeat and Reader are doing much better jobs of exposing official corruptions and malfeasances in San Diego County than your much larger U-T San Diego. (Remember the CityBeat’s recent, remarkable series on deaths in our San Diego jail system.) It was a supreme irony that the propaganda and lie-filled mouthpiece of the Soviet Communist Party was named “Pravda,” which means “truth” in Russian. Since your newspaper is an equally disgusting mouthpiece of the rich and powerful in San Diego, you should change the name of your newspaper to “The San Diego Pravda” like the despicable Communist Party mouthpiece. That name befits your pathetic newspaper.

With such an apathetic journalism, it is not surprising that your circulation is going down and down.

Very sincerely yours,

Joyce Diaz

Watchdog response

U-T Watchdog broke the story of Detective Blackford's DUI and followed it very closely. During that process, we also broke the story of the potential prosecution of other officers accused of covering it up, and how that was rejected by the district attorney. We also have written several stories including the Blackford case as an example of allegations of a culture of broader misconduct in the police department. We are sorry you missed these stories, and offer these links for you to review them: